Splitting Apart describes decline in a specific form: not collapse from above, but erosion from below. Five yielding lines press up against a single strong line at the top. The structure is being worn away from its base.

The structure: Mountain over Earth

The mountain resting on the earth — the image of something solid that is nonetheless being reduced. Mountains erode; the question is what remains.

The Judgment

Splitting Apart. It does not further one to go anywhere.
Judgment

Unusually blunt. The advice is not to act, because action in a disintegrating situation tends to accelerate the disintegration.

The Image

The mountain rests on the earth: the image of Splitting Apart. Thus those in superior positions can ensure their position only by giving generously to those below.
Image

The instruction names the cause directly. What erodes a structure is not supporting the base that holds it.

The lines

  • Line 1 — The leg of the bed is split. Those who persevere are destroyed. Misfortune.
  • Line 2 — The bed is split at the edge. Those who persevere are destroyed. Misfortune.
  • Line 3 — He splits with them. No blame.
  • Line 4 — The bed is split up to the skin. Misfortune.
  • Line 5 — Shoals of fishes. Favor comes through the court ladies. Everything furthers.
  • Line 6 — There is a large fruit still uneaten. The superior man receives a carriage; the house of the inferior man is split apart.

The bed image runs from the leg to the sleeper: the decay climbs. Line 5 is the only favourable line, and it works by yielding rather than resisting.

In practice

  • Decline of this kind is usually visible at the base long before it reaches the top.
  • The Image is the operational advice: support what is under you before it stops holding.
  • Line 6 suggests something survives the collapse, and what it is depends on what you were carrying.

The large fruit

Line 6 is the reason this hexagram is not simply bleak. Something survives the splitting — a fruit left uneaten, which is to say a seed. The text is describing a cycle rather than an endpoint.

Note also that the Image is addressed to those in superior positions. The responsibility for the erosion sits at the top, not the bottom.

Reading the direction

The image is worth noting: the mountain is on top and the earth below, and erosion works upward. Decline that begins at the base is visible early if anyone is looking.